NEW CATHOLIC BISHOPS TOLD THEY DON’T HAVE TO REPORT SEXUAL ABUSE TO POLICE

From the Link: http://www.newsweek.com/bishops-no-obligation-report-sexual-abuse-425509

A Vatican official has told newly appointed bishops that they have no obligation to report instances of clerical sexual abuse, as it’s the responsibility of the victims and their families.

Updated | New Catholic bishops have been told that they have no obligation to report clerical child abuse, according to reports.

During a presentation for newly appointed bishops, French Monsignor Tony Anatrella said they don’t have a duty to report abuse because it should be the responsibility of victims and their families to go to the police. The comments were first reported by John L. Allen at the Catholic news site Cruxnow.com earlier this week.

Anatrella, a psychtherapist and consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, is known for his controversial views on homosexuality, including that the acceptance of homosexuality in the West is creating “serious problems” for children. He also helped to write a training document for newly appointed bishops that further spells out the church’s stance on clerical sexual abuse.

“According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds,” the training document, which was released by the Vatican earlier this month, reads. The document says bishops are required only to report the suspected abuse internally.

A Vatican source told Newsweek that the comments made during the presentation are Anatrella’s opinion and not an official Vatican position. The source added that in some countries it is difficult for clergy to report abuse to authorities due to the “quite hostile” relationship between church and state. In countries with corrupt police forces and hostile governments, for example, there is greater risk of not having a presumption of innocence and a fair trial, he said.

“What would that mean in communist countries that throw priests and bishops into jail just for mentioning the pope’s name?” the Vatican source said. “To turn over the investigation of an accusation that could be false in such a situation is something that must be weighed.”

The Catholic League, a Catholic civil rights organization, also said the comments made by Anatrella were solely his opinion, and a Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said they were “not in any way—as someone has mistakenly interpreted—a new Vatican document or a new instruction or new ‘guidelines’ for bishops.”

Anatrella’s comments appear to be at odds with efforts made by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which held a week-long meeting earlier this month. The proposals from the commission, which will be sent to Pope Francis for his consideration, include “a request for him to remind all authorities in the Church of the importance of responding directly to victims and survivors who approach him,” the Vatican said in a press release.

Allen notes that the commission was not involved in the training session given by Anatrella amd wonders why the commission is “not entrusted with making such a presentation to new bishops.” The next course for new bishops will be held in September, Allen reports.

“In one sense, this isn’t surprising. As BishopAccountability.org has pointed out, ‘zero tolerance,’ while often uttered by Catholic officials, isn’t even the official policy of the global church,” Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement emailed to Newsweek.

“But it’s infuriating—and dangerous—that so many believe the myth that bishops are changing how they deal with abuse and that so little attention is paid when evidence to the contrary—like this disclosure by Allen—emerges,” she said.

The commission was set up in March 2014 with the explicit goal of proposing initiatives for “protecting minors and vulnerable adults, in order that we may do everything possible to ensure that crimes such as those which have occurred are no longer repeated in the Church.” Futhermore, the commission “is to promote local responsibility in the particular Churches, uniting their efforts to those of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for the protection of all children and vulnerable adults.”

This story has been updated to include comments from SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Comments from the Vatican have also been added

South America has become a safe haven for the Catholic Church’s alleged child molesters. The Vatican has no comment.

Accused child sex abuser Father Jan Van Dael plays with the hair of a boy collecting a soup donation, in a slum outside Caucaia, Brazil.Credit:Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost

Jennifer’s memories were scattered and fleeting. They came suddenly, triggered by a smell or a glimpse of light dappled through stained glass. The aroma of freshly baked mince pies repulsed her nostrils. Scented candles, like the ones in the small San Antonio, Texas church she attended as an elementary school girl, made her gag with disgust.

Jennifer’s mother couldn’t understand these abrupt fits of revulsion, or the angry outbursts that accompanied them. For years, her daughter had been slipping into chaos, flunking classes, running with a bad crowd. The once happy-go-lucky child had changed beyond all recognition.

Then, one day, years after her life began unraveling, it all came pouring out.

“She finally came and told me that he had raped her,” the girl’s mother told GlobalPost. Therapy had dragged up Jennifer’s memories: a sudden blacking out, possibly from a drug she had been slipped, then dizzily regaining consciousness on a bed in the rectory. “I remember when I came to, it was just him and me and he was on top of me and I remember that stained-glass window and he did it in front of the Blessed Sacrament,” Jennifer told her mother.

*****

Jennifer — who is identified only by her first name because she still suffers trauma from the alleged incident — is by no means the only parishioner to accuse Father Federico Fernandez Baeza of abuse.

Fernandez arrived in San Antonio in the early 1980s. By 1983, prosecutors had charged him with exposing himself to two young girls in a local swimming pool. A year later, he had begun ritually abusing and raping two young boys in his care, according to a 1988 lawsuit filed by a local family. The abuse continued for two years, the lawsuit claimed.

The priest was never convicted of a crime. Instead the church negotiated a large cash settlement, and Fernandez promptly relocated to Colombia, where he continued working for the Catholic Church. In May, GlobalPost traced him to the picturesque seaside city of Cartagena. He’s currently a senior administrator and priest at a prestigious Catholic university, enjoying all the privilege, respect and unfettered access to young people that comes with being a member of the clergy.

*****

Fernandez is just one of scores of Catholic priests who have been accused of abusing children in the United States and Europe, but who have avoided accountability simply by moving to a less-developed country.

Even as Pope Francis has touted reform of the Vatican’s safeguards against child abuse, GlobalPost has found that the Catholic Church has allowed allegedly abusive priests to slip off to parts of the world where they would face less scrutiny from prosecutors and the media.

In a yearlong investigation, we tracked down and confronted five such priests. All were able to continue working for the church despite serious accusations against them. When we found them, all but one continued to lead Mass, mostly in remote, poor communities in South America.

Some of these men faced criminal investigations, but went abroad without charges being brought against them. One of the priests admitted to GlobalPost that he had molested a 13-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he can never work again in the US. He continues to preach in a small Peruvian fishing village. Another is currently under investigation by authorities in Brazil for a string of alleged molestations, including accusations in the poor neighborhoods where for two decades he ran a home for street children — with the support of the Catholic Church.

GlobalPost interviewed one diocese leader in these communities, but was otherwise not granted interviews with local church officials. And despite protracted efforts and discussions with church press officers, neither the Vatican nor the chairman of a new papal commission set up specifically to tackle church child abuse would speak with us.

For advocates and attorneys who have studied abusive Catholic priests for decades, the flight of these fathers overseas represents just the latest chapter in a long story of deceit, collusion and church-sponsored impunity for child abusers.

“As developed countries find it tougher to keep predator priests on the job, bishops are increasingly moving them to the developing world where there’s less vigorous law enforcement, less independent media and a greater power differential between priests and parishioners,” said David Clohessy, national director and spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “This is massive, and my suspicion is that it’s becoming more and more pronounced.”

“I’m a pedophile, in the real sense”

The boy runs along the trash-strewn potholed dirt street, his long copper-colored hair flowing behind him. Father Jan Van Dael, 76, reaches out to touch his arm, moving close.

“He reminds me of a boy who was in my house in Rio de Janeiro,” Van Dael says, referring to the orphanage he used to run in the 1980s.

The boy wriggles free and lines up to fill his pot from the containers of soup that Van Dael and his volunteers have brought to this small slum just outside the rough-and-tumble city of Caucaia, in Brazil’s northeast.

Van Dael, an avuncular, slightly doddery Belgian priest, seems deeply affectionate toward pre-adolescent boys. He loves to take their photographs. He reaches for children he barely knows, like a father hungry for attention.

Back in the late 1980s, Van Dael moved from Europe to Brazil, first settling in Rio de Janeiro. After a falling out with the local diocese (Van Dael says church officials objected to his working with poor street children whom they deemed criminals), the Belgian was asked to leave, and ended up in windswept Caucaia, a few miles from the crime-ridden city of Fortaleza.

Taking advantage of Brazil’s extraordinary exchange rates at the time, which greatly favored the US dollar and European currencies, the “gringo priest” set up a new orphanage for abandoned and troubled street kids.

He called it “Esperança da Criança,” or Children’s Hope.

But the home’s whitewashed walls — which Van Dael hung with dozens of photographs he took of young boys — appear to have borne witness to plenty of misery, along with any hope.

According to Brazilian prosecutors, Van Dael is currently under investigation by both the Belgian and Brazilian federal authorities, an inquiry that adds to a litany of child abuse accusations against Van Dael on two continents.

Last year, a Dutch television station interviewed two men who claimed Van Dael fondled them at church and at a Catholic summer camp in Belgium in the early 1970s. A federal prosecutor in Fortaleza told the station that there had also been several complaints of sexual abuse against Van Dael over the last 10 years.

Father Jan Van Dael shows off his collection of portraits — most of young boys — on the veranda outside his home. The building once housed orphans, but Van Dael closed that operation down two years ago.Credit:Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost

In 2011, two former interns at Van Dael’s orphanage told the Belgian media that children there said the priest had abused them. And the head of a local government child protection agency in Caucaia told GlobalPost he had received a complaint about Van Dael back in 2008. The complaint languished, the official said, because the agency didn’t have the staff or resources to investigate it.

Van Dael has been suspected of pedophilia for years. Meanwhile, his career as a priest has flourished in the Archdiocese of Fortaleza.

His services are in constant demand. He said he sometimes celebrates Mass six times a weekend in the poor neighborhoods of Caucaia. When we visited, Van Dael led services at two different churches and handed out soup to children, something he said he does every day.

Everywhere he went, Father Jan was met with reverence and respect.

In a lengthy interview, he told GlobalPost he has never been sexually attracted to children. He said all the accusations against him are lies, drummed up by abusive parents, envious competitors, or university students who don’t understand the world. He compared himself to Jesus Christ, saying he was a rebel, a trailblazer and a true humanitarian.

The archbishop of Fortaleza, who has control over which priests celebrate Mass within the archdiocese, initially agreed to an interview. But after we confronted Van Dael about the accusations against him, the archbishop said he couldn’t meet with GlobalPost.

The Catholic Church has a long history of secrecy in matters related to sex abuse allegations, reaffirmed by a 2001 confidential apostolic letter written by Pope John Paul II.

The letter clarified that all cases of sexual abuse by priests were to be handled by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, an internal affairs unit of the Catholic Church, which was then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became pope in 2005). The letter also reasserted that all such cases must be kept strictly confidential under the “pontifical secret,” a move that has been heavily criticized ever since.

In August, Livia Maria de Sousa, a federal prosecutor in Fortaleza, told GlobalPost that her staff had interviewed three people who formerly lived in Van Dael’s orphanage, as part of an ongoing investigation against the priest. She said the interviews had uncovered no new evidence against Van Dael, and added that investigators were also scheduled to interview the priest in September.

De Sousa lamented that abusive priests too often come to Brazil in search of prey. She said investigating child sex abuse within the church can be frustratingly slow and difficult — especially when suspects are revered as moral icons, and victims are too young to understand sexual contact.

“Brazil is a country where Catholicism is very strong and present, and where the people really respect the church, priests, bishops and all religious authorities,” she said. “So it’s very difficult for a child to understand an act, a touch, that might have a sense of exploitation and abuse, and that is in fact abuse.”

Van Dael closed down Esperança da Criança a couple of years ago, when the Brazilian authorities changed their policies for housing troubled children. But he continues to come into daily contact with vulnerable children.

In doing so, Van Dael draws his legitimacy from the Archdiocese of Fortaleza and, ultimately, the Vatican. Despite years of accusations and investigations, Van Dael said he has never faced a formal investigation by the church.

Zero tolerance, double standard

Father Paul Madden is an admitted child molester.

In the 1970s, Madden, who was then a priest in the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, took a trip to Ireland with a 13-year-old boy in his parish. During that trip, according to a lawsuit filed by the victim in 2002, Madden “repeatedly molested and raped” the boy.

Father Paul Madden offers communion to a congregant in Puerto Huarmey, Peru.Credit:Jimmy Chalk/GlobalPost

“Since 1973 I have been plagued with remorse and guilt for my molestation of your son,” reads the letter. “There is no excuse for my actions and I assume responsibility for them as a humble penitent.”

In 2003 — soon after the victim’s second lawsuit was dismissed because too much time had passed — Madden joined the Diocese of Chimbote, Peru. In April, GlobalPost found him celebrating his weekly Mass in the tiny, scruffy fishing village of Puerto Huarmey.

Approached after the service, Madden again admitted the abuse, though he wouldn’t elaborate on what occurred.

“Something happened, I was drunk, and I had never drank before in my life, it was the first time ever, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and … yeah, well, something happened,” he told GlobalPost.

Madden expressed remorse for his actions, but said that, in keeping with church teachings, God has forgiven him for his sins.

“I feel quite confident in the mercy of God, and I feel quite confident that God forgives all sin,” he said. “If I’m guilty, I’m forgiven.”

Still, he’s under no illusions that he’s been pardoned in the eyes of the American public, or even the American Catholic Church. Asked if he could return to work as a priest in the US, Madden, who is originally from Ireland, was clear.

“I don’t think so, no, because of this ‘zero policy.’ And this was before — that’s not just from Pope Francis, this came out years before in the US.”

“When even a single act of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon is admitted or is established after an appropriate process in accord with canon law, the offending priest or deacon will be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry,” reads one of the rules approved by the Vatican after the conference.

But victim advocates say the pope’s message was an exercise in public relations, and that meaningful change is still a long way off.

Anne Barrett-Doyle is a founder of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks abusive priests around the world. She said that despite the pope’s letter, it’s still entirely unclear what standards bishops worldwide are now being held to. She said the rules in the US, though far from perfect, remain much more stringent than church doctrine elsewhere.

In Peru, Madden’s church superior acknowledged that the new zero tolerance paradigm requires the diocese to act in this case.

Interviewed in the city of Chimbote, Vicar General Juan Roger Rodriguez Ruiz, the diocese’ second-in-command, said that Bishop Angel Simon Piorno was shocked to learn from GlobalPost about Madden’s past, and would scrutinize the priest in light of the zero tolerance policy.

“Some may find it hard, even painful, that the bishop has to investigate a priest, but it has to be done,” Rodriguez said. He added that Madden would be suspended if necessary.

However, in mid-August a member of Madden’s parish confirmed to GlobalPost by phone that the priest continued to preach every Sunday. We attempted to confirm this with Rodriguez, but our email and phone calls went unreturned.

Disgraced in Minnesota, welcomed back to Ecuador

To find Father Francisco “Fredy” Montero, one has to negotiate a deadly, precipitous mountain pass — so high that wisps of cloud sweep past — searching for a village that locals describe vaguely as “very remote” and “out there somewhere in the tropics.”

The road, gouged in places by great landslides, weaves down from chilly highlands to the steamy, banana-stuffed interior of central Ecuador’s Bolivar province. Here, an hour’s drive from the nearest small town and several hours from the nearest big city, is the hamlet of Las Naves.

On Google Maps, Las Naves appears as a ring of green jungle. There are no streets, landmarks or homes. It’s wildly different from the broad avenues of Minneapolis, Minnesota, where not long ago Montero made a name for himself as a gregarious priest, church journalist, part-time radio DJ and accused child molester.

Montero, then in his mid-30s, had been a popular addition to the Archdiocese of Minneapolis.

A quick talker with an easy smile, he charmed the local Hispanic population, helped to found a Spanish-language church newspaper and installed himself as a fixture in his adopted homeland.

But five years after arriving in a Minnesota blizzard, Montero’s cheerful façade fell apart. In 2007, an official at the archdiocese reported to the Minneapolis Police Department that Montero had been accused of abusing a 4-year-old girl. Detectives arrested the young priest, seizing his computer and other possessions.“Father Fredy,” as he was known to parishioners, was hardly the archetypal pious priest. For months, according to a police report, he had been sleeping with at least one adult churchgoer — a witness to the abuse — who later told police she and the priest would have sex on Montero’s desk on a daily basis.

The little girl, who is not being identified at the request of her mother, was interviewed by a forensic psychologist and by other experts with the Hennepin County Child Protection Services. They concluded Montero had, indeed, abused the girl. Later, when Montero appealed that finding, the agency upheld it, according to a diocese document obtained by GlobalPost.

Police investigators searched through Montero’s computer, looking for evidence of child pornography. But prosecutors eventually decided there simply wasn’t enough evidence to charge the priest with a crime. Almost immediately, Montero flew back to Ecuador.

Sgt. Darren Blauert, the Minneapolis detective who investigated Montero, said although there were no charges brought, something happened to the child that was “very inappropriate.” He expressed serious concern that Montero had been allowed to continue to work with children.

“There was enough that I would be very concerned that this person was continuing what he was doing,” Blauert said.

GlobalPost’s trip to far-flung Guaranda, where Montero is now based, serves as a reminder of what a huge, sprawling institution the Catholic Church is, and how challenging it might seem to police priests who span the globe.

But thanks to the internet, for many priests a background check is only a few clicks away.

BishopAccountability.org maintains a database of more than 6,400 clerics who have been credibly accused of child sexual abuse in the United States. The database contains extensive information about Montero, Madden, Van Dael and many other priests who have avoided scrutiny by simply getting on a plane and flying to a new country.

In Montero’s case, there was no need to even double-check the priest’s background in those online records. Court documents show that the Minnesota accusations followed him to Ecuador.

A dossier sent from the Archdiocese of Minneapolis to Guaranda warned the South American diocese of Montero’s past. Archdiocese officials also reported the alleged abuse to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s internal investigators.

But Montero was apparently able to shrug off his past once he arrived back in his native Ecuador.

After a brief hiatus, during which he said he was employed as a journalist, Montero was placed in a succession of remote local parishes in the diocese of Guaranda, where he continued to celebrate Mass and interact extensively with young people. He eventually stopped working as a priest a couple of years ago — not because of the accusations against him or the potential harm he might inflict on children, but because he decided to run for mayor of Las Naves. The local bishop decided politics and priesthood weren’t a good mix, he said.

Bishop Angel Sanchez, who welcomed Montero back to Guaranda, now heads a different diocese in Ecuador. He said in a telephone interview that at the time Montero returned to Ecuador he was aware of the accusations against the priest in the US. But Sanchez said he was confident of Montero’s innocence, since the case against him was “not concrete,” and the priest was never criminally charged.

The bishop also confirmed that, to his knowledge, Montero was not investigated further by the Vatican after arriving in Ecuador.

Victim advocates say Montero’s case is a textbook example of how the Catholic Church is shirking its responsibility to protect children.

Zero tolerance policies are one thing, but without meaningful implementation by local bishops — the Vatican’s footmen and enforcers in communities — church doctrines make little difference, according to Clohessy, the director of SNAP.

“There’s no checks and balances,” Clohessy said. “It’s like having speed limits with no cops.”

Minneapolis attorney Jeff Anderson agrees. Anderson, who has spent three decades suing priests and church officials for covering up child abuse, brought a lawsuit against Montero in 2007 and has kept track of the Ecuadorean priest in recent years.

Anderson said the onus to protect children was on the bishops of Guaranda and Minneapolis, whom he claims let Montero flee to Ecuador without being held accountable. And the ultimate responsibility for protecting children from predator priests, he says, lies with the Vatican.

“Until this pope removes top officials in these crimes and sends a message that he is serious, nothing seems to change,” Anderson said. “Until this pope turns over all the documents and all the offenders who they know are offenders and are in ministry and turn them over to law enforcement across the globe, there seems to be little that is being done or changed.”

David Joles, the father of the young girl whom Montero allegedly abused, finds it hard to talk about his disgust for the Catholic Church, and the pain Montero’s actions brought him and his family.

“Sometimes she would bring him up out of the blue,” he said. “She’d be riding in the car, sitting in the back seat and say things like, ‘Father Fredy kissed me on the lips.’”

In 2011, Joles’ daughter died from an inoperable brain tumor. She was 8 years old.

In the pain and anguish he’s had to endure since her passing, Joles is sickened that the man he says so bruised his daughter’s short life is still walking free, and could return to the pulpit at any time.

“I began to see the way [church officials] operate,” Joles said. “It was big business and from their point of view it seemed like the individual was always secondary to the business, and [my daughter] was just but one kid, one individual who had been harmed by a priest, but that Catholicism and the church was more important than people like [her].”

Back in Ecuador, GlobalPost confronted Montero.

After waiting for hours in Las Naves, we eventually spotted him on the narrow road leading into town. His Chevy pickup truck was overflowing with children, whom he had just taken to a local soccer tournament.

Initially reluctant, Montero eventually agreed to an interview on the side of the street in Las Naves. He stressed that he wasn’t hiding from anyone, and said he’d spent years working with children without any other accusations. He denied that the alleged abuse took place.

While the portion of Americans identifying themselves as Catholic has remained relatively stable, these days only about 27 percent say they are “strong” Catholics, down more than 15 points since the mid-1980s. Over the past 50 years, the number of US priests has also declined by about a third, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown University-affiliated research center. In contrast, the worldwide Catholic population has remained consistent at about 17 percent.

Early in Pope Francis’s papacy, there’s hope that the church is ready for meaningful change to protect children. Still, there’s already evidence that the pope appears unwilling to publicly confess to the church’s sins.

Consider the case of Father Carlos Urrutigoity, once one of the four most powerful churchmen in Paraguay. Urrutigoity had a big problem: He’d been accused of sexually abusing young men in two different dioceses in the US.

In 2014, following reports by BishopAccountability.org, GlobalPost traveled to Paraguay to confront Urrutigoity, who had been promoted to second-in-command of the diocese of Ciudad del Este in the country’s east.

Pedophile Priest, Father Carlos Urrigoity

GlobalPost found Urrutigoity celebrating Mass in the lavish surroundings of a major church there. He answered questions without hesitation, claiming that the accusations in his past were all lies. The enigmatic vicar general shrugged off with a smile the public claim by the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania that he posed a “serious threat to young people.”

One month after GlobalPost published its investigation on Urrutigoity, the Vatican sent a cardinal and a bishop to Paraguay on a well-publicized visit. The purpose of the trip was shrouded in secrecy, but a few weeks later, both Urrutigoity and the bishop of Ciudad del Este who had sheltered and promoted him were removed from the diocese by the Vatican.

Occurring just a year after Pope Francis rose to power, the move gave observers hope that the Vatican was finally getting serious about condemning and stamping out child abuse across the Catholic Church. South American activists in particular were hopeful that the Argentine pope was sending a signal by dismissing Urrutigoity, a fellow Argentine.

But a Vatican spokesman was quick to tell reporters that these dismissals had more to do with internal church politics than cleaning up abuse.

Urrutigoity’s apparent wrongdoing has so far gone unacknowledged by the church, and his alleged victims continue to suffer without the solace of justice.

There have been some positive steps, however. Last year, in addition to holding a well-publicized meeting with victims of abuse by priests, Pope Francis announced the creation of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. And in June the Vatican announced it was setting up a new system of tribunals to hear cases of bishops accused of protecting or covering up child abuse by priests.

GlobalPost tried for weeks to interview Boston’s Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, who chairs the commission and proposed the new tribunals to the pope. His staff insisted that our story was outside the cardinal’s, and the commission’s, purview.

Numerous calls and emails to the Vatican press office went unreturned.

Peter Saunders, a lay member of the new pontifical commission and an advocate for victims of sexual abuse by priests, said the priests GlobalPost tracked down are exactly the sort of cases the Catholic Church, and new commission, need to be focusing on.

“Zero tolerance is meaningless unless it applies to the whole institution,” he said. “Arguably, some of the biggest problems are in the less well-off parts of the world, South America, Africa, the Far East. This is where we know many priests flee to in order to carry on their abuse, which is an absolute outrage.”

Saunders acknowledged that the commission’s remit is still a little fuzzy. “We’re all scratching our heads a bit,” he said. But he also expressed new optimism that a crisis he’s been sounding the alarm about for decades will be addressed.

“I have to remain hopeful until my hopes are dashed,” he said. “This is a new future for the church.”

When the church does nothing: “I wanted to kill him”

Throughout her early adulthood, Jennifer had terrible nightmares.

“She just kept dreaming of this man chasing her and chasing her. She kept spiraling down into a black hole,” her mother recalled in a recent interview with GlobalPost in San Antonio, Texas.

The man hunted her down, into the depths of the hole, until she woke up screaming, Jennifer’s mother said. Eventually, the mother told her daughter to try to keep the dream going, and to spin around inside it and confront the man who chased her through her nights.

Then the daughter had a startling revelation. The man in the dream was the same man she says sexually abused her in front of a stained glass window years before.

“She said it was Father Fred,” the mother said: Federico Fernandez Baeza.

In 1987, Fernandez was indicted by a grand jury on two second-degree felony charges of indecency with a child. The charges stemmed from his alleged abuse of two boys over two years.

A year later, Fernandez was negotiating a plea bargain with prosecutors, the family’s lawyer told local media. He had offered to plead guilty to the two counts of indecency in exchange for a 10-year suspended sentence and the promise that he would stay away from children and seek psychiatric help, the attorney told reporters.
But Fernandez and the Diocese of San Antonio’s lawyers were also negotiating a cash settlement with the family on the side, for more than $1 million, according to media reports.

Just before the plea bargain was to be heard in court, the cash settlement was finalized. Its terms were sealed and remain a secret.

A few days later, a district judge rejected Fernandez’s plea bargain. She told reporters that she rejected the deal because she did not believe the defendant should get special treatment because he was a priest.

But Fernandez never faced a trial.

After his plea deal was rejected, the San Antonio prosecutors suddenly dropped their case against him. The United Press International news agency quoted Bexar County District Attorney Fred Rodriguez as saying that prosecutors were looking out for the best interests of the victims, and that their family “had already been victimized once.” In asking for a dismissal, prosecutors told the judge that a trial would have been too traumatic for the children, the agency reported.

Fernandez, so close to pleading guilty to child sexual abuse, was free.

This judicial snafu so incensed one Texas state legislator that he introduced a bill that would bar victims of sexual abuse who receive cash settlements from later refusing to testify in criminal cases.

“State laws need to be changed so the guilty offender will not be able to buy off the victim and go free,” state Rep. Jerry Beauchamp told a San Antonio newspaper in 1989.

But the bizarre story of Federico Fernandez Baeza wasn’t yet over.

In 2011, Humberto Leal, a Mexican national on death row in Texas for raping and bludgeoning to death a 16-year-old girl in 1995 (a crime he denied committing), suddenly told his attorneys he had been molested as a child by Fernandez.

Leal told a forensic psychologist that the abuse began with inappropriate touching, and ended with anal rape when he was in 5th grade. The abuse revelations inspired a campaign for clemency from others who said Fernandez had abused them as well.

Leal’s legal team then found several more alleged victims of the priest. One was Jennifer. Months later, Leal was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas.

After flying to Cartagena to meet him, GlobalPost discovered that speaking to Fernandez would be far harder than finding him.

This map shows the paths traveled by the priests we tracked after sex abuse allegations were made against them in US and European dioceses.Credit: GlobalPost

A guard at the university’s front gate called someone in Fernandez’s office, then informed us the priest was traveling, and prevented us from entering. During a game of cat-and-mouse that lasted several days and included hours of staking out the university entrance, three university officials confirmed that the priest had indeed been there when we asked to interview him. One of those officials, University Vice President Jorge Valdez, informed us the priest had not left town until the second morning.

We also received several anonymous emails and phone calls from someone identifying themselves as “Limpieza Unidos” (which translates roughly to “Cleaning Together”) who claimed to be a university employee. The messages started arriving shortly after GlobalPost emailed Fernandez’s colleagues at the university.

“I understand that you’re looking for Father Federico Fernandez and he’s hiding from you,” one email read. “I can tell you that he’s here at the university.”

After two brief phone conversations, Limpieza Unidos stopped answering the phone or responding to emails. Calls to the cellphone number for Fernandez that the source provided were also not picked up.

Outside the university gates, students expressed disgust and disbelief that an accused child abuser was employed as a top administrator at their school.

“Just like in the United States, that’s a crime here too. Sadly, they haven’t told us any of this, they’re showing us a different façade,” said 21-year-old microbiology student Jessie Palomino.

“It just makes you think, what is the church doing about these cases?” added her friend, 20-year-old Ena Acosta.

Back in San Antonio, other Catholics were wondering the same thing.

Jennifer’s father told GlobalPost he remains deeply distressed by the nightmares that haunted his daughter. He said his family life has long revolved around the local church. (He asked not to be identified out of concern about backlash from parishioners.)

A former military man, he said he thought many times about taking matters into his own hands. He said he had tried to get postings near Fernandez, so he could slip across the border into Colombia in pursuit of the priest.

“I was going to kill him,” Jennifer’s father said. “I think the whole Catholic Church has failed us, especially around this community. And I’m talking about the orders, the bishops, the cardinals, everybody involved in the Church. They know they have a problem, but they continue to let these things happen.”

It’s no secret that Cardinal George Pell has come under sustained criticism in recent years as damning allegations of systemic cover-ups by the Catholic Church have surfaced during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

But until this week, his detractors have been largely Australian and the public censure cauterised at a domestic level. This has been the case even as he ascended to the upper echelons of the Vatican after taking up a coveted role managing the Holy See’s finances in February last year.

Enter Peter Saunders, a British child abuse survivor and the man hand-picked by Pope Francis to advise the church on child protection policies. Last year, he joined the nine-member commission, called the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which was established by the Pope to address the scourge of sex abuse within the church and which reports directly to him.

Pedophile Pimp Cardinal George Pell of the Unholy Roman Catholic Church of Pedophile Pimps

On Sunday, he became a powerful voice in the growing crescendo demanding Cardinal Pell be called to account for his role as a senior member of Australia’s Catholic clergy during the decades from which countless claims of abuse have emerged.

Mr Saunders’ comments come as questions have intensified over whether Cardinal Pell had supported notorious paedophile priests, including Gerald Ridsdale, instead of protecting victims and their families. He has repeatedly denied these accusations.

“I personally think that his position is untenable, because he has now a catalogue of denials,” Mr Saunders, 57, told Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night.

“He has a catalogue of denigrating people, of acting with callousness, cold-heartedness – almost sociopathic, I would go as far as to say.”

The significance of his excoriating broadside – a papal commissioner calling for the resignation of a senior Vatican figure – cannot be understated.

Nor can Mr Saunders’ fierce resolve for justice, one which is informed as much by his own devout Catholicism as it is by his own horrendous abuse at the hands of two Jesuit priests at a school in Wimbledon, London.

In addition to the two Jesuit priests, who also molested his brother, he was sexually abused by the head teacher of his primary school in New Malden, London, as well as by a family member. Even after the teacher was exposed as “a serial child abuser”, he was simply transferred to another Catholic school within the diocese, rather than being sacked and reported to the police.

His attempts to come to terms with his abuse as an adult prompted him to found the National Association for People Abuse in Childhood, a British charity, in 1995.

In July last year, he was one of six abuse survivors to relay their experiences directly to the Pope in a meeting at the Vatican.

Six months after this private meeting, he received the phone call asking him to join the papal commission.

A self-described “thorn in the side of the Catholic Church”, he has been forthright in his criticism of the church’s handling of sexual abuse, accusing it of being “intimately involved in cover-ups and denials in the past”.

But he believes Pope Francis is genuine in wanting to crack down on abusive priests, describing him as the “right man for the job at this time”.

“I believe him to be sincere. Let’s give the process a chance.”

It is impossible to know whether Mr Saunders’ blistering 60 Minutes interview has caused ructions beneath the Vatican’s serene exterior. But his message to Pope Francis was unambiguous.

“I think it’s critical [Cardinal Pell] is moved aside – that he is sent back to Australia and that the Pope takes the strongest action against him.”

He continued: “To me, it seems highly likely that George Pell knew [why Ridsdale was being moved], and if he knew, and if the bishop knew, then these are people who should actually be facing criminal charges now, not just sanctions at the hands of the Pope or the church or the attention of the media.

“These are people who have allegedly allowed the abuse of children to continue – sometimes for many years – and that is an unforgivable crime.”

“Cardinal Pell has never met Mr Saunders, who seems to have formed his strong opinions without ever having spoken to His Eminence,” a spokesperson for the Cardinal said in a statement.

“In light of all of the available material, including evidence from the Cardinal under oath, there is no excuse for broadcasting incorrect and prejudicial material.”

For now it remains to be seen whether Cardinal Pell will accede to the growing calls for his return to Australia to give evidence at the royal commission but, at the very least, he has indicated his willingness to do so.

Kerrie Armstrong

Cardinal George Pell is “a dangerous individual” and “almost sociopathic” in his response to child sexual abuse victims, Pope Francis’ specially-appointed commissioner for the protection of children, Peter Saunders, says.

In an interview with Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes, Mr Saunders said Cardinal Pell had a “moral responsibility” to front the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and address allegations that he knew of priests abusing children in Ballarat and elsewhere but did nothing to stop it. Cardinal Pell has denied these accusations.

“I personally think that his position is untenable, because he has now a catalogue of denials,” Mr Saunders said in the interview, which aired on Sunday night.

“He has a catalogue of denigrating people, of acting with callousness, cold-heartedness – almost sociopathic, I would go as far as to say – this lack of care.”

Pope Francis last December appointed Mr Saunders, a British survivor of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, to the new Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to ensure the Catholic Church acted with greater accountability and transparency in relation to child sexual abuse.

Mr Saunders said that, by refusing to front the royal commission until he was specifically invited, Cardinal Pell was “making a mockery of the Papal Commission, of the Pope himself, but most of all, of the victims and the survivors”.

Cardinal George Pell

“I think anybody who is a serious obstacle to the work of the commission and to the work of the Pope in trying to clean up the church’s act over this matter, I think they need to be taken aside very, very quickly and removed from any kind of position of influence.”

Cardinal Pell was appointed to manage the Vatican’s finances in February last year, making him one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church.

Questions have been raised over whether Cardinal Pell had supported notorious paedophile priests, including Gerald Ridsdale, instead of protecting victims and their families.

Cardinal Pell has previously apologised to the commission for accompanying Ridsdale to court in 1993, but has denied he tried to bribe a victim to keep quiet as part of a cover-up and that he was dismissive of victims and their families.

Mr Saunders said Cardinal Pell was present at a meeting with Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns in 1982 in which they discussed the need to move Ridsdale to another parish, one of the ways the church frequently dealt with paedophile priests.

“I think it’s inconceivable that they would not have known [why Ridsdale was being moved],” he said.

“To me, it seems highly likely that George Pell knew, and if he knew, and if the bishop knew, then these are people who should actually be facing criminal charges now, not just sanctions at the hands of the Pope or the church or the attention of the media.

“These are people who have allegedly allowed the abuse of children to continue – sometimes for many years – and that is an unforgivable crime.

“I think it’s critical [Cardinal Pell] is moved aside – that he is sent back to Australia and that the Pope takes the strongest action against him.”

Cardinal Pell declined a request from 60 Minutes to be interviewed for the program but last week wrote to the commission reiterating that he would appear in person if required.

“Without wanting to pre-empt the Royal Commission in any way – you can’t just invite yourself to give evidence – I want to make it absolutely clear that I am willing to give evidence should the Commission request this, be it by statement, appearance by video link, or by attending personally,” he wrote.

“Like everyone else I am horrified by the accounts that survivors have given in their evidence during the Ballarat hearings, and at the enormous impact the abuse has had on them, their families and the community.”

‘Callous, cold-hearted’: Pope’s commissioner says George Pell has to go

CARDINAL George Pell has been condemned over his treatment of abuse victims by the man hand-picked by the Pope to protect children in the Catholic Church.

In an extraordinary attack aired on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes, Peter Saunders said the cardinal had acted with “callousness” and “cold-heartedness”.

Pope Francis’s specially appointed commissioner for the protection of children added:“I think it’s critical that he is moved aside — that he is sent back to Australia and that the Pope takes the strongest action against him.”

A spokesperson for Cardinal Pell has since responded to the report.

“Cardinal Pell has been informed of the contents of the 60 Minutes program this evening. The false and misleading claims made against His Eminence are outrageous,” the statement reads.

“From his earliest actions as an Archbishop, Cardinal Pell has taken a strong stand against child sexual abuse and put in place processes to enable complaints to be brought forward and independently investigated.

“Cardinal Pell has never met Mr Saunders, who seems to have formed his strong opinions without ever having spoken to His Eminence.

“In light of all the available material, including evidence from the Cardinal under oath, there is no excuse for broadcasting incorrect and prejudicial material.

“In the circumstances, the Cardinal is left no alternative but to consult with his legal advisers.”

In the past fortnight, the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse heard damning evidence in Ballarat against Father Gerald Ridsdale, Australia’s worst paedophile priest. Witnesses accused Pell of ignoring warnings about Ridsdale, and one claims Pell tried to silence him with a bribe, an allegation he has previously denied.

The Commission also heard that Pell attended a meeting where it was decided that Ridsdale needed to be moved to another parish, and did not question the move.

Ridsdale was moved nine times within Victoria.

The Catholic Church has a history of moving paedophile priests instead of taking action against them.

“I think he is somebody who, understandably, victim survivors will have a huge, huge issue with.”

Saunders, who joined the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors six months ago, said Pell had “a moral responsibility” to face the Royal Commission, “to allay the fears that many victims and survivors feel, which is that he is avoiding facing some very, very difficult truths, which is his past behaviour.”

Pell has said he has not been asked to meet the Royal Commission following the latest claims and that he fully supports its work. As head of Vatican finances, he is thought to be the second-most powerful man in the Catholic Church.

A spokesperson for Pell said he had not seen the material prior to 60 Minutes’ broadcast, and that he had not met nor been approached by Mr Saunders.

David Ridsdale told the Royal Commission 13 years ago that when he turned to Pell after being abused by his uncle, Father Gerald Ridsdale, Pell said: “I want to know what it would take to keep you quiet.”

The cardinal then still chose to publicly support Ridsdale by accompanying him to court when he was charged with abusing a number of other boys, which he now concedes might have been “offensive.”

Saunders said: “To me, it’s absolutely outrageous, and it demonstrates once again the callousness, the cold-heartedness and the contempt that George Pell appears to display for this whole issue and particularly, for the victims of these dreadful crimes.”

In 2002, Anthony and Chrissie Foster said they had approached Pell, then-Archbishop of Melbourne, about the repeated sexual abuse of their daughters’ Emma and Katie by their school priest. Emma later took her own life.

The couple showed Pell a photo of Emma on her confirmation day and one after she had self-harmed, and he reportedly said: “She’s changed, hasn’t she?”

Pell denied having seen the photo in 2002, but in 2013 he said he probably had, and simply hadn’t had “a chance for a considered response”.

“Those photographs, they are not something that you would forget,” said Saunders, calling Pell a “massive thorn in the side” of the Pope.

“He is making a mockery of the Papal Commission, of the Pope himself, but most of all, of the victims and the survivors.

“Anybody who is a serious obstacle to the work of the Commission and to the work of the Pope in trying to clean up the Church’s act over this matter, I think they need to be taken aside very, very quickly and removed from any kind of position of influence.

“Our direction cannot include cover-ups and allowing children to be abused”.

In a statement provided before the program aired, a spokesperson for Cardinal Pell said: “Cardinal Pell knows of the important work Mr Saunders has done as a survivor of abuse to assist victims, including the establishment of a victims survivors group in the United Kingdom and more recently serving as member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors established by the Holy Father to develop policy to achieve this.

“While members are of course entitled to their views and opinions, the recently approved Statutes of the Commission make it clear that the Commission’s role does not include commenting on individual cases, nor does the Commission have the capacity to investigate individual cases.

“Many of the issues were addressed in the final report of the 2013 Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry where there are no adverse findings against Cardinal Pell. These old and repeated allegations have been addressed many times by the Cardinal since 2002.

“As was pointed out in a recent statement by the Cardinal, he has never condoned or protected offenders, has never condoned or participated in moving known offenders and did not at any time attempt to bribe David Ridsdale, whose story has varied many times over the years.

“It is not clear whether Mr Saunders is aware of the Cardinal’s statements or has reviewed the extensive material available from previous Inquiries and appearances at the Royal Commission.

“It is also not clear if Mr Saunders is aware Cardinal Pell established within 100 days of being appointed as an Archbishop, an independent scheme to support victims. While there was and is always room for improvement, the Melbourne Response had the explicit support of the Victorian Police and other civil authorities and was at the time warmly welcomed by victim support groups.

“The Cardinal has repeated many times his deepest sympathy for the victims of abuse and their families. He has made it clear on several occasions he supports the work of the Royal Commission, where he has already appeared twice, and remains willing to assist in its work.”